Currently, content for omnidirectional stereo displays is relegated to video games where the stereo disparity is artificially generated by the gaming engine. There is interest and need to generate and record content from other sources. Because stereo displays need two viewpoints to create the ocular disparity required for human 3D dimensional image understanding, and the fact that the pose of the display apparatus changes in six dimensions, traditional image collection and encoding mechanisms are not well suited for the task.
Although the process of collecting and encoding fixed stereo imagery has been studied and demonstrated over the years, the because often the pose of the head tracking device used by the viewer is not known at the time of the recording, moreover, it is likely that multiple viewers will try to enjoy the recording by moving the their heads in different directions. Therefore, the omnidirectional or many-directional data collection is would be a useful tool however, possessing a set of challenges that this invention addresses.
Because of the side-by-side eye placement in the human anatomy, horizontal disparity is required for comfortable viewing. Although there are inventions already disclosed that create omnidirectional stereo systems, they provide vertical disparities that are not suited for direct human use. Another invention presents an omnidirectional horizontal stereo system which has significant disadvantages over the system presented in this invention in that it requires a large number of cameras and only provides horizontal disparity in a single plane.